No, it doesn't. It's a consistent system. If it weren't consistent, it wouldn't even be worth considering.

Well, it depends on what you call "quantum mechanics."

You have to understand - the reason why so many physicists are actually mathematicians is because the math needed to describe physics at the scale we can reach now doesn't exist yet. So what physicists do with the math they have is say "&!@# it, I'm pretty damn sure the theory's right, so we'll just quietly ignore this problem and pretend it actually works out." Later physicists wave their hands and try to claim that what they're doing is perfectly fine. But that's post-hoc rationalization - they bull$*!+ their way through it, and they knew it. Seriously, some of the math blows up in 4 dimensions, so one of the tricks is to say "well... let's *pretend* we don't live in 4 dimensions... let's pretend we live in "4+a little" dimensions, and then we'll just take 'a little' to go to zero and pretend that's the right answer." The mathematicians around might say that's okay (it's called 'analytic continuation') but seriously, if the math doesn't work in the number of dimensions you're actually working in, it ain't all that great math.

So if you're talking about the concepts of quantum mechanics... the fact that things are quantized, the fact that certain observables are complementary, the fact that you have certain fundamental symmetries of the universe - those guys are fine. But if you're talking about the actual math - it's loaded with contradictions. Physicists just say "OK... so the answer isn't *really* infinity... so let's just replace it and pretend we never saw the infinity." Again, you might think "well, OK..." but the problem is that sometimes when you cheat and do that, you end up making your nice, elegant theory that you base all your other math on not actually work anymore. It just really depends on whether you think the math is all that important or not - and most physicists tend to side on the "if I can calculate a number and that number ends up being right, I don't care if the math sucks."

As a note, this is par for the course for physicists. Dirac needed a function that picked out a specific value when you integrated over it. So he just said "OK... there is one. Now we're gonna use it and play around with it." Mathematicians looked at it and said "WTF! How the heck does this work?" and Dirac basically responded "Who the hell knows, you go find out and I'm gonna do physics." Thirty years later they managed to actually work out a consistent description of Dirac's delta function. (Meanwhile Dirac had laid down most of the basics for the next century of physics).

Dirac's attitude was that the math that's used isn't intended to be descriptive, but just to figure out some way to calculate things. His opinion would be that describing string theory to the public is a waste of time, because it's just math, and has nothing to do with what's actually going on in the universe. Similarly he would be railing against Kaku's goofy "space pushes" description. History has proven Dirac to be right many many times - the mathematics of a theory usually long outlast its silly examples - so I tend to side with him in that. Waving your hands around and saying "look, strings!" is just not helpful to actually explain physics.

I mention this because your statement of "if it wasn't consistent, it wouldn't be worth considering" is unfortunately very naive. In fact, most modern physics theories start out life hopelessly inconsistent, but physicists, like Dirac, basically said "whatever, I can use it to calculate stuff. Good enough for me" and just hope the mathematicians figure it out eventually.

Seriously, some of the math blows up in 4 dimensions, so one of the tricks is to say "well... let's *pretend* we don't live in 4 dimensions... let's pretend we live in "4+a little" dimensions, and then we'll just take 'a little' to go to zero and pretend that's the right answer." The mathematicians around might say that's okay (it's called 'analytic continuation') but seriously, if the math doesn't work in the number of dimensions you're actually working in, it ain't all that great math.

Ah-hem. NOBODY shall banish us from the paradise that Euler has created for us.

On the larger point (that physicists are/should be first keen on explaining material phenomena, then worry about mathematical rigour), this is true and the Dirac delta function is a nice example.

But I resent the implication that the Dirac delta function is not proper math. It turns out that the usual concept of function is not enough to make sense of Dirac's idea, but distributions work fine- legitimate mathematical objects defined based on Dirac's intuition, not by their value at a point but by their properties as operators on functions. And I'm not seeing where contradictions arise from the Dirac delta anyway.

Mathematics itself made progress by first formulating theories in an intuitive fashion: calculus and Euclid's (!!) geometry stand out here. It was later work that teased out assumptions made in such ideas and put them on rigurous footing, but with one worrying exception, the later rigurous systems validated the old intuitions. Which turned out to be, except that one thing I didn't mention, consistent.

So where are inconsistencies in the newer theories? I'm honestly curious, this stuff interests me.

_________________The whole point of this is lost if you keep it a secret.

Guyyyyysssss, this amount of off-topic and occasionally strongly-opinionated debate is gonna attract Oberon, he senses potential flame targets the same way artic wolves smell fear! He's been gone...like months, but suddenly came out of hibernation to tear into that lolita chick...but that was a few days ago so I bet he's hungry again lol.

_________________"I'm afraid I don't understand. And also afraid that I do."

No, it doesn't. It's a consistent system. If it weren't consistent, it wouldn't even be worth considering.

Well, it depends on what you call "quantum mechanics."

I mean the stuff you said was the fundamentals - the part that's left of QM before you begin making claims about what sorts of interactions there are. The rest - the renormalization group and all that infinity-zapping stuff - I take that to be a consequence of their being approximations for some reason or another (e.g. space is discrete, or a near-field correction on the interactions of strings)

In that case, we just need to partition off the 'don't go here' areas as 'outside the bounds of our approximation' and no inconsistency arises. But the fundamental core of QM? The notion that we're in a Hilbert space with parameters describing a space of at least 3+1 dimensions? That has to be consistent to be worth considering.

I did not mean to make a claim that ANY rule which if applied everywhere would lead to a contradiction is useless in all cases, only those that actually need to be applied everywhere if they're to mean anything at all.

Seriously, some of the math blows up in 4 dimensions, so one of the tricks is to say "well... let's *pretend* we don't live in 4 dimensions... let's pretend we live in "4+a little" dimensions, and then we'll just take 'a little' to go to zero and pretend that's the right answer." The mathematicians around might say that's okay (it's called 'analytic continuation') but seriously, if the math doesn't work in the number of dimensions you're actually working in, it ain't all that great math.

Ah-hem. NOBODY shall banish us from the paradise that Euler has created for us.

On the larger point (that physicists are/should be first keen on explaining material phenomena, then worry about mathematical rigour), this is true and the Dirac delta function is a nice example.

But I resent the implication that the Dirac delta function is not proper math. It turns out that the usual concept of function is not enough to make sense of Dirac's idea, but distributions work fine- legitimate mathematical objects defined based on Dirac's intuition, not by their value at a point but by their properties as operators on functions. And I'm not seeing where contradictions arise from the Dirac delta anyway.

Mathematics itself made progress by first formulating theories in an intuitive fashion: calculus and Euclid's (!!) geometry stand out here. It was later work that teased out assumptions made in such ideas and put them on rigurous footing, but with one worrying exception, the later rigurous systems validated the old intuitions. Which turned out to be, except that one thing I didn't mention, consistent.

So where are inconsistencies in the newer theories? I'm honestly curious, this stuff interests me.

As far as inconsistencies and contradictions in the theory? 5 words. "Spooky action at a distance". Quantum entanglement can't be explained within QM. It's inconsistent with the theory of locality, but it works. So they just kinda wrote in an exception going "Booped if we know why, but this happens." There's a lot of things in QM where they can't explain why it happens, but they know it does, and they can make a model that predicts it, but it goes against other rules in QM. "You can't do anything nonlocally... except for this and that's okay."

I'm not a physicist or math guy, but I know a bit more about QM than the average layperson. They can model the behavior that they see and use those models to accurately predict what happens, but as to the why? They don't know. So you get theory after theory. And all of it is just stuff from the imagination to try to explain in math the behaviors that they see in reality.

_________________"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu, Chapter 1, Line 18, The Art of War

"The principle of strategy is to know ten thousand things by having one thing." - Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Earth, Go Rin No Sho

As far as inconsistencies and contradictions in the theory? 5 words. "Spooky action at a distance". Quantum entanglement can't be explained within QM. It's inconsistent with the theory of locality, but it works.

Urh, not sure I follow. Entanglement appears naturally in the mathematical theory and is indeed confirmed by experiment so far. If anything this points to intuitions of locality being off-base. The mathematical theory itself works fine.

I guess the thing that's referred to as inconsistent is the habit of "infinities" (aka, divergent sums) to show up when doing calculations. This has some analog in classical physics, as a differential equation may not have solutions that are valid "for all time" but instead blow up at singularities (though the reasons stuff like this happens are surely different; and while an equation that blows up simply means the assumptions used in the model are only valid in certain ranges of parameters, it may still be possible to sum divergent series and get a reasonable value. Again, none shall banish us from the paradise that Euler hath wrought).

_________________The whole point of this is lost if you keep it a secret.

As far as inconsistencies and contradictions in the theory? 5 words. "Spooky action at a distance". Quantum entanglement can't be explained within QM. It's inconsistent with the theory of locality, but it works.

Urh, not sure I follow. Entanglement appears naturally in the mathematical theory and is indeed confirmed by experiment so far. If anything this points to intuitions of locality being off-base. The mathematical theory itself works fine.

I guess the thing that's referred to as inconsistent is the habit of "infinities" (aka, divergent sums) to show up when doing calculations. This has some analog in classical physics, as a differential equation may not have solutions that are valid "for all time" but instead blow up at singularities (though the reasons stuff like this happens are surely different; and while an equation that blows up simply means the assumptions used in the model are only valid in certain ranges of parameters, it may still be possible to sum divergent series and get a reasonable value. Again, none shall banish us from the paradise that Euler hath wrought).

That's kinda what I mean actually. Entanglement works in the math, but the math was made up to fit the situation. They can make math that describes what they are seeing, but that's what they are doing. Making up math. Why it works, what's actually happening? Nobody has a clue. Newtonian physics is consistent and explicable in the large scale. "This is what happens, here's the math and here's what's actually happening". Yeah, Newtonian has had time to be sorted out, but that's kinda the point that barawn and I are making. QM is really new (relatively speaking). Yeah, it works, but only because they made the math to fit. Why it works? Who knows. That's why we are wary of theorists. Until someone comes along and makes all the specifics fit together, it's anyone's guess as to what's actually going on.

Kinda like what Wanda's going through. There's a theory saying "Fate exists and this is yours". But what's actually going on or going to happen? Nobody knows. Delphie made her best guess but her math didn't fit. Now Wanda's dealing with a big mess.

...okay, that didn't work as well as I'd hope.

_________________"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu, Chapter 1, Line 18, The Art of War

"The principle of strategy is to know ten thousand things by having one thing." - Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Earth, Go Rin No Sho

On the Wanda as a PC thing, the Predictions going Cloudy at Faq's fall could be explained by Wanda having a choice between the Gobwin Knob route, the Magick Kingdom route, the Goodminton's rebirth route, the Teleport herself to another World with a gem formed from Faq's entire treasury route...

On Wanda's price, if Clay was right with his thing about evading luckmancy backlash by affecting roles Goodminton rarely makes, it seems likely that Wanda's pop debt would have to be paid in one of two ways, by the popping of sub par Units around her (why hello there Stanley) and/or by Sides expending resources to claim her as their own. If Olive had succeeded acquiring a Slave-Wanda, whatever price she paid would have cleared some of Wanda's unpaid bill. The failed attempt by the soon to be Un-Larry may have counted. The butchers bill Stanley paid to capture her at Faq almost certainly did.

On Wanda and suicide, given her 'life is pain, Fate the only painkiller' attitude in the Future Era, I wouldn't be surprised if she does try it at some point.

As for Fate, if Wanda were intended, by Fate, to fall into Olive's hands, why was Larry defeated in his capture attempt? More likely that the good ship OlivexWanda was intended by Fate to help Wanda deal with the horrible life that's heading her way, too bad Delphie torpedoed it.

A few random thoughts: I see Wanda's been converted to the way of Chocolate despite her unsureness. Hmmmm... Ditch Witch sounds like a term for Dirtamancer. Do I spy a flower on Wanda's side?

Mrtyuh wrote:

While I agree Delphie shares responsibility for the dire circumstances in which Goodminton finds itself, I don't think all the blame can be laid on her. Delphie was mistaken when she lied, since it ruined her credibility. Delphie was mistaken to inform Tommy about the details of the Prediction. Delphie was mistaken in her fatalism towards Overlord Firebaugh. She has made poor choices. Wanda was mistaken in her resolute determination to fight Fate, instead of working with it to reach a better outcome. Tommy was mistaken informing Larry of the Prediction, which probably led to Haffaton deciding not to continue diplomacy. Overlord Firebaugh was mistaken when he chose inaction. There were many mistakes made by many people which compounded on each other. Delphie did not have all the answers. She should have admitted that from the start. She did, however, act in her side's best interests, with what information she did have, to the best of her ability. The fact that she failed just makes her human. She failed, and she should have gone about it differently, but I can't fault her for trying.

This is what we know. It has been five turns since the air battle. We haven't heard anything about Goodfinger or Goodminton's other city, although, at the time of the air battle, Goodfinger was likely to fall soon, and Overlord Firebaugh was considering razing it. There has been on action in the capital. Goodminton has sought no action in the field. There are still captured units from the air battle that haven't turned. Wanda has not come up with any brilliant new ideas. Wanda ordered Clay to boost three scouts. Overlord Firebaugh gave Wanda a boon after the air battle. Wanda told her father she would be the field commander Goodminton needed. Fritz is practical but not imaginative, and he feels it is not his place to make strategic decisions. So, what are Wanda's duties?

Mind you, this is all speculation. First, it may be Wanda's duty to interrogate the prisoners and to attempt to turn them. We know Wanda had a talent for interrogation and torture at Gobwin Knob. This may be where she gets her start. It may also be where she discovers her sadism kink. We know Wanda is responsible for prisoners at Gobwin Knob. We also know Vanna is responsible for prisoners at Faq. Now, it can be argued these are special cases, Wanda's personal interest in Jillian and Vanna being a Turnamancer, but it also plausible that prisoners falling under the auspices of casters being the norm in Erfworld. The second possibility is that Wanda has become the de facto Chief Warlord of Goodminton. Her father may still hope her to be the commander that will save their side. It was her brilliant plan that saved the capital. Unfortunately, she can't come up with another. Instead of trying to wrestle the initiative from their enemies, which is really their only hope, they are surrendering it. Patton once said that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan next week. Wanda doesn't realize this, so she is doing nothing while she tries to come up with a brilliant plan. Goodminton is scouting, though, so they are trying to keep tabs on enemy movements. Just because Goodminton has sought no engagements in the field, it does not mean there have not been any. Goodminton's enemies are certainly moving, even if Goodminton is not. It may be that Wanda is looking for a weak, isolated enemy force she feels she can overwhelm. Goodminton seems to expect another air attack, so they are just sitting there waiting for it. So, Wanda may need to meet with Fritz and Overlord Firebaugh to discuss strategy, even if she hasn't come up with any good ideas yet.

Gobwin Knob paid her upkeep for hundreds of turns. They gave her free reign to do what she wanted, indulge in her hobbies. While Wanda gave them Faq's three cities, which probably gave their treasury a nice boost, it wasn't her intention to do so. She may have been behind the death of Saline IV. She certainly inflated Stanley's ego, encouraging him to attack his neighbors and claim a Titanic Mandate. She was an enabler to Stanley. She was also in control of the relationship with him. She dictated the terms. Any position in which she found herself, she put herself there. Wanda was probably more responsible for the dire situation Gobwin Knob found itself in than Delphie is for the one Goodminton finds itself in. Anything Wanda has done for Gobwin Knob has been solely in her own interest. Any benefit Gobwin Knob has reaped is wholely an unintended consequence. Of course, I'm splitting hairs here. My intention was to point out how Wanda once seemed irate over the idea of someone being loyal to Fate, when that is where her own loyalty will eventually lie.

I also find the difference between the Chief Predictamancer of Goodminton and the Chief Croakamancer of Goodminton interesting. Delphie was manipulative, haughty and autocratic, but she was never thoughtless or cruel. While Wanda is not yet manipulative, we know she will be by the time she gets to Gobwin Knob. Currently, all the other adjectives describe her. She is haughty in her new raiment, enjoying the power it gives her. She is autocratic, forcing Clay and Delphie to change quarters and dictating most of their actions. She is thoughtless and cruel. She only cares about herself, her father and her side. She cared about her brother. She gives no thought to what others want. She tramples all over the feelings of others in her pursuit of her own desires. She does not care how much she hurts Delphie; she's upset because she things don't work the way she wants them to. Her orders may end up killing Delphie and Clay. She has forbidden them from entering the Magic Kingdom without orders. If they find themselves in a situation where they need to flee or perish, they'll perish because they can't flee. While I didn't like Lady Temple as Chief Caster, I think Lady Firebaugh is much worse. Maybe the job just brings out the worst in her. Maybe she will be more sympathetic in service of Haffaton and Faq. Anyway, enough pointless musing..

Everything that happened with regards to Olive, happened as a result of her lies and her plotting. So yes, the blame is entirely hers. Grand failure and arch treachery rolled into one package. The Ditch Witch's hubris and indeed, her bullying are what led to Wanda's reaction, her bleatings sent Atomic to his end. Her plan alerted the wolves to tasty meat, Goodminton is more of a target than it was before, thanks to her.

I believe it's six turns at this point, as a new turn started just before she left the Magic Kingdom.

We know nothing of the sort. She's beaten a girl who likes it, anything more than that is speculation on your part. And while the thought of having Olive in her dungeon made her feel funny... she hasn't given the idea of torture a thought on camera. Never mind that she'd have mentioned when thinking of the value of those prisoners if she were happily spanking them. Remember what was said of her dreams? I wouldn't be surprised at all if her first experiences with such matters occur when being cruelly treated at Faq, either as a direct response to her capture or when serving as Jillian's whipping girl. As for Warlord Wanda, it seems likely she's involved in whatever long (or short) term planning they're making based on what she said to Clay. Recollect, they lost their Siege group while withdrawing from Kiloton, until they replace it, they can't strike back. Worse, they urgently need to raze higher level Cities and the only Haffaton Cities reachable by Road are dinky ones. But I'm really concerned with the uses for her juices. She has two underlings to spell up the Tower for her and a desire to learn new magics, so... what experiments could she be performing? She managed to make a Hat Golem, first try, in the field, with the improved Tower bonus... A randomish thought: Flesh Golems, Croakamancy or Weirdomancy?

What of it? The destruction of Faq did more for Gobwin Knob at a stroke than most of it's Commanders could ever hope to accomplish. Her Upkeep was repaid in advance to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands of turns thanks to that. Her motivations during that incident don't matter, money's money. Her Uncroaked made up between a third to a half of their forces by the time the RCC reached Gobwin Knob. A Warlord she summoned saved the Side from the RCC. The Volcano wealth would have been impossible without her. If she did make Stanley Overlord, that just puts him further in her debt. And the RCC's attack was an utterly unprovoked act of aggression courtesy of Jetstone, no fault of hers. That Side owes her, not the other way around. Besides, she's loyal to the Arkenhammer to all intents and purposes, rather like the Dwagons.

Delphie is a bullying, bottom grabbing malcontent who forced Wanda to live in the Dungeon and leaked Side Secrets to the enemy. That is high treason in time of war. Tommy died in a trap Delphie helped set. With the Tower's bonus having been improved the way it has, there is no longer any excuse to skulk in the best position to run away from and every reason to be in the Tower close to the Casting Chamber (so yes, that's a charge of cowardice against Delphie as well). What, apart from her family and Side, is there for Wanda to care for? She can't do her job, that of Chief Caster, without exercising control over her Side's magical resources. The position may be a joke at Gobwin Knob, but when in a Side where it means responsibility... And after all that leaked information, how can she trust her underlings not to start blabbing to the enemy if allowed into the Magick Kingdom?

Speaking as an Engineer (my degree is applied physics, and some universities put the Engineering department in the Engineering deptartment, since Engineers merely apply the physics developed by the scientists) whose best marks were in Calculus... Housellama have no clue what you're talking about wrt to Quantum Mechanics.

They aren't developing new Mathematics. They are developing new perspectives on how to view reality that start the mathematics on different beliefs that will mathematically develop into the current known equations. It's not new Math. It's just plain old calculus, applied to new starting positions.

I'm going to remind you why Calculus was invented. It was done by the greatest Scientist of his age -- Sir Isaac Newton. He developed it in order to describe the paths of objects in orbit. Calculus was not invented and then applied to Physics... Calculus was developed by Physics and handed to mathematicians. Physics and Calculus are the same thing, and have been for over 200 years. All Physics is described by equations derived from other equations, and without those Mathematical equations, Physics can solve nothing.

In short, Newton knew the classic geometrical descriptions of how planets moved, but developed calculus in order to develop a general explanation for all planetary motion. Calculus gave him the equations that described the general theory of gravity. That's what Physics does -- it develops higher order equations to describe the universe, that gives us access to new knowledge and effects we may not have observed without knowing we could find them.

If you need an example of how new physics is used to describe old, we can look at the derivation of E= 1/2*m*v*v (energy in a moving body) from the principles of relativity developed by Einstein that tells us (I won't bore you wiht the development from first principles, just jump straight to Einstein's derivation), the real equation is E = 1/2 *m * (v*c/(c-v))^2. Now, for our little Earth, everything moves much, much slower than c (the speed of light). So, essentially, v = 0 when compared to c. c/(c-0) = c/c = 1, so E = 1/2m*(v*1)^2 = 1/2*m*v*v. Now, it's not exact, but since v for a car is 1 millionth the speed of light, the error is so small we could never detect it, so the Newtonian equation describes the observations admirably. See how we developed a known Newtonian equation from a complex Einsteinian equation? THAT is what Physicists do. They try to find the equations that describe the universe at a more fundamental level that can derive the equations that we currently know. They do this in all branches of Physics, but somehow you're singling out QM as different. It is not. So your following statement:

Housellama wrote:

Entanglement works in the math, but the math was made up to fit the situation.

Is completely absurd.

You can say that about all of Physics, if that's what you want to say. QM is NOT treated any differently than other Physics, much as the conspiracy theorists want them to be. Since you can reject all of Physics with that statement, you actually accept no Physics as valid, because the same methods applied to QM are applied to all of Physics. Either you accept it all, or none. You cannot pick and choose some Physics as "made up" and the rest as "convenient to my purposes, so I'll accept it." E=1/2*M*v*v is just as made up to fit the situation, since we have derived it from Relavity. Quantum effects are observable and testable, and therefore equations can be developed to explain their effects, in exactly the same way observing a car moving is observable. You're playing favorites -- finding fault in QM for what is done in every other branch of physics, and it's your lack of knowledge of general physics (and the willful ignorance of your sources) that give you that impression. QM is not different.

I have no problem with you saying what you are, but you need to say it about every single branch of Physics, or you're applying a double standard. If you want to reject physics in general for describing observed effects with equations, go right ahead. But you have to do it for Physics in general, because that's what all of Physics is. Observe, Theorize, Derive, Test, rinse and repeat. You're faulting QM for the Derivation step, when all Physics uses the same methodology.

Housellama wrote:

Quantum entanglement can't be explained within QM. It's inconsistent with the theory of locality, but it works. So they just kinda wrote in an exception going "Booped if we know why, but this happens."

False. Entanglement was derived by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen 70 years before it could be tested, in 1935. The way you state this is that it was detected and then added in as an extension. Completely false. EPR had noticed that there was a loophole in QM, which suggested entanglement, and were trying to use this to discredit QM (Einstein did not like the uncertainty of QM). It was forgotten for decades as QM developed apace. Complex systems can have inconsistencies in their description, but if you don't have anything else to explain what's happening, you don't abandon that theory just because you don't have one that does the job better. You develop the one you have, and hope the inconsistency resolves itself. It's kind of like saying, "We're only providing water to 90% of the city. We need to abandon the city because the water system is inadequate!" Nevermind that there's no water at all in the desert outside the walls. Of course, when we could finally detect entanglement, we tested for it... and found EPR had actually found a quantum effect. The loophole they wanted to use to discredit QM was actually a real quantum effect, and no loophole at all.

Housellama wrote:

I'm not a physicist or math guy, but I know a bit more about QM than the average layperson.

In other words, you're full of horse cookies. Sit down, do some basic research, and learn the history of what you're embarrassing yourself about. I am sick of useless pseudo-scientists like you that get sucked into the Conspiracy bunk-science books written by self-proclaimed geniuses and sold over the Internet. I've heard these theories before. They're Bogus -- 100% flat out pure horse cookies. Even cursory examination of the original history reveals massive flaws in their presentation of science and its historical development. THEY LIE TO YOU TO SELL BOOKS AND FEED THEIR EGOS. And you didn't even do the basic study to check their sources. Did they give you sources to check? Or did they sound so good, so you believed them?

What you "know" is lies. All of it. The history they tell you is a lie. Their claims about what Physics and Calculus is are lies.

housellama wrote:

They can model the behavior that they see and use those models to accurately predict what happens, but as to the why? They don't know.

Which is true of all of physics. We don't concern ourselves with "why". We may never know "why" -- there may be no "why". We learn HOW and leave the "why" to religion. We know how the sun comes up every day -- it's the pull of all atoms on each other which we call gravity. We don't know how that force is transmitted, yet. We also see a magnet pull on an iron nail. We call this pull magnetism. We do know how -- electromagnetic photons made of subatomic particles transmit force on the magnetically receptive iron atoms. Why does that subatomic particle pull on the iron atom? Don't know. Doesn't matter. It does and that is useful to us. Pondering "why" is for philosophers and fools. Figuring out how the sub-atomic particle causes a force of attraction is all that matters. "Why" implies intelligence, since it implies purpose. The universe, to a scientist, does not need to have a purpose to exist and be observable and explainable.

A physical theory that uses local hidden variables to spoof quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems is optimized for spoofing quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems. It was grasping at straws even then.

A physical theory that uses local hidden variables to spoof quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems is optimized for spoofing quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems. It was grasping at straws even then.

Noooo, that's not how it was developed. Entanglement was postulated as the result of a thought experiment known as the EPR paradox (notably involving individual photons entering a prism angled such that some photons reflect and others reffract), not "hidden variables". Mathematically including the theory inside QM mechanics may require complex mathematics, but that is only an effort to include the theory in the current model.

Speaking as an Engineer (my degree is applied physics, and some universities put the Engineering department in the Engineering deptartment, since Engineers merely apply the physics developed by the scientists) whose best marks were in Calculus... Housellama have no clue what you're talking about wrt to Quantum Mechanics.

Comparatively speaking, you're absolutely right. I know a little, but not much. More than the average person, but nowhere close to a professional. Then again, I never claimed to be a professional. I'm outclassed here and I freely admit it. Having read your post and done some research, you're right. I knew about the EPR paradox, but since my knowledge is a patchwork of information from different sources (some reliable, some questionable) I didn't make the connection. Sometimes I don't know what I know. Another problem is that I don't have a lot of the right language to communicate what's in my head, for reasons I go into below.

Kreistor wrote:

They aren't developing new Mathematics. They are developing new perspectives on how to view reality that start the mathematics on different beliefs that will mathematically develop into the current known equations. It's not new Math. It's just plain old calculus, applied to new starting positions.

[History lesson clipped]

THAT is what Physicists do. They try to find the equations that describe the universe at a more fundamental level that can derive the equations that we currently know.

That's actually what I was trying (badly) to say. I'm not a math person. It's one of my blind spots. It took me 5 tries to pass Calc 1. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I can't do it. Calc doesn't fit in my brain, for whatever reason. It's actually a little frustrating to me because I wanted to be an engineer. Can't be an engineer if you can't do higher level math.

When I said "new math", what I was trying to say was new equations. I do know what physicists do. I (sorta) understand the behavior (what things do) but I couldn't do any math to describe it nor could I explain the exact mechanics of it (because that takes math).

Kreistor wrote:

They do this in all branches of Physics, but somehow you're singling out QM as different. It is not.

The process is the same, absolutely. The way math describes the world is the same in all physics. But there is something fundamentally different about QM, something that makes it distinct from everything else: uncertainty. More later.

Kreistor wrote:

So your following statement:

Housellama wrote:

Entanglement works in the math, but the math was made up to fit the situation.

Is completely absurd.

Granted. My history was wrong and I got that screwed up.

Kreistor wrote:

Housellama wrote:

I'm not a physicist or math guy, but I know a bit more about QM than the average layperson.

In other words, you're full of horse cookies. Sit down, do some basic research, and learn the history of what you're embarrassing yourself about. I am sick of useless pseudo-scientists like you that get sucked into the Conspiracy bunk-science books written by self-proclaimed geniuses and sold over the Internet. I've heard these theories before. They're Bogus -- 100% flat out pure horse cookies. Even cursory examination of the original history reveals massive flaws in their presentation of science and its historical development. THEY LIE TO YOU TO SELL BOOKS AND FEED THEIR EGOS. And you didn't even do the basic study to check their sources. Did they give you sources to check? Or did they sound so good, so you believed them?

What you "know" is lies. All of it. The history they tell you is a lie. Their claims about what Physics and Calculus is are lies.

Woah... slow down there. I got some history wrong. Fair cop. But I'm not one of those that jumps on the bandwagons. I'm in the sciences myself, so I know something about self promoting crackpots. I also know enough to tell the difference between generally accepted science and individuals pushing their pet theories. My problems earlier came from ignorance and miscommunication, not bad knowledge. I'll freely admit to ignorance. Ignorance can be cured. I probably do have some bad knowledge somewhere in this patchwork of stuff in my head, but I know the difference between reputable and questionable.

I can understand and appreciate your vehemence about your chosen field. I get pissed off when I see lunatics out there selling bad psychology. And don't get me started on a lot of 'alternative' therapists. You see me as one of those spreading bad knowledge, and this time you are right. But it was an honest mistake, not an attempt to spread bad knowledge. I own this bit of misinformation and apologize for it.

Kreistor wrote:

housellama wrote:

They can model the behavior that they see and use those models to accurately predict what happens, but as to the why? They don't know.

Which is true of all of physics. We don't concern ourselves with "why". We may never know "why" -- there may be no "why". We learn HOW and leave the "why" to religion. We know how the sun comes up every day -- it's the pull of all atoms on each other which we call gravity. We don't know how that force is transmitted, yet. We also see a magnet pull on an iron nail. We call this pull magnetism. We do know how -- electromagnetic photons made of subatomic particles transmit force on the magnetically receptive iron atoms. Why does that subatomic particle pull on the iron atom? Don't know. Doesn't matter. It does and that is useful to us. Pondering "why" is for philosophers and fools. Figuring out how the sub-atomic particle causes a force of attraction is all that matters. "Why" implies intelligence, since it implies purpose. The universe, to a scientist, does not need to have a purpose to exist and be observable and explainable.

This is another case of me not communicating well. When I said why, I didn't mean in a philosophical sense, I meant it in a causation sense. In your example, the nail moves because the forces were carried through the subatomic particles. That's a causation. But there are a lot of places in QM where causation has a big blank spot. They have the equations and they can make predictions about, for example, waveform collapse, but the causation behind waveform collapse is still unknown. Yeah, it doesn't matter what causes it to collapse for the purposes of making predictions in the current equations, but you can't tell me that there aren't physicists searching for the answer to that one.

This leads back to why I think QM is different. If you told scientists that you couldn't predict where a particular electron is going to be, they would think you were out of your head without the math to back it up. And many people did. Einstein's "spooky action at a distance", for example. But QM worked, so crazy as it is, it was kept.

Perhaps I'm putting the 'blame' in the wrong place here. It would be more accurate to say that Nature is weird and therefore QM is weird. It accurately models what is there, but what is there is freaking bizarre. Yeah, the basics of QM are scientifically accepted these days, but when you look at it from an outside point of view, it's pretty booped up. But that's Mother Nature's fault. You guys are just going where the equations take you.

_________________"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu, Chapter 1, Line 18, The Art of War

"The principle of strategy is to know ten thousand things by having one thing." - Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Earth, Go Rin No Sho

A physical theory that uses local hidden variables to spoof quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems is optimized for spoofing quantum entanglement in combination with detector systems. It was grasping at straws even then.

Noooo, that's not how it was developed. Entanglement was postulated as the result of a thought experiment known as the EPR paradox (notably involving individual photons entering a prism angled such that some photons reflect and others reffract), not "hidden variables".

You misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm saying that any alternative explanation for the Aspect experiment besides QM has to be built to purpose-built to emulate QM yet not be it.

QM was not mathematically proven by the experiment. It was just proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Housellama wrote:

They have the equations and they can make predictions about, for example, waveform collapse, but the causation behind waveform collapse is still unknown. Yeah, it doesn't matter what causes it to collapse for the purposes of making predictions in the current equations, but you can't tell me that there aren't physicists searching for the answer to that one.

Actually, they figured it out a while back. It's called decoherence, and though the line of reasoning is long, it is intuitively comprehensible. Yes, intuitively. It makes so much sense that it undoes a lot of the roadblocks to comprehension that spawned such quotes as 'no one really understands quantum mechanics'. Now that's still true in a lot of senses - it's a really complicated theory with a lot of unexplored consequences - but understanding how the basics fit together, which is what those quotes were talking about... that is now widely understood.

As for uncertainty, well, that's a minefield. 'Uncertainty' is a really lousy name for the referent. That reminds me - for a non-mathematical yet very accurate description of the behavior of quantum mechanics, I recommend the Quantum Physics Sequence by Eliezer Yudkowsky. He may be a philosopher/computer scientist/Harry Potter fanfic author, and not a physicist, but I vouch for it. He could wear Gilgamesh Wulfenbach's hat and the only inaccurate part would be the name.

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